iHome iA100: Beatweek 2010 App Enhanced Accessory of the Year
December 31, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
iHome finally combines its groundbreaking iHome+Sleep app with a piece of hardware worthy of it. The iA5 showed what was possible, but the iA100 is the payoff: innovative app integration with a premium dockable stereo system. This CES 2010 product took forever to ship, but the wait is worth it as it’s now compatible with the iPad along with the iPhone & iPod Touch.
Buy now: $197 at Amazon.com.
“Just a Dream” by Nelly: Beatweek 2010 Song of the Year
December 30, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Those who thought “Hot in Herre” was so big that Nelly could never become better known for any other song saw that prediction go up in smoke in 2010 as the hip hop artist unleashed “Just a Dream” on the world from his latest album 5.0. While remaining clearly identifiable as being a hip hop song, Just a Dream incorporates enough of a pop sensibility and a rock instrumental foundation that the song has found airplay in multiple formats. More importantly, it’s just plain catchy. In a year in which rappers and pop stars threw themselves at each other in attempting to create crossover hits, Nelly accomplished that feat the old fashioned way: he simply created a great song. And for that, “Just a Dream” by Nelly is the Beatweek 2010 Song of the Year.
iHome iP1 Studio Series: Beatweek 2010 Stereo of the Year
December 27, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
It tells you something about what kind a year it was for iPhone and iPod dockable stereo systems in general when the best option on the market in 2010, the iHome iP1, actually came to market in 2009. So while iHome turned its focus toward the more economy-priced iP3 this year and most competitors treaded water or took the year off, the iP1 still stands out as the top dockable stereo on the market. It’s a $299 home system, not really portable in any sense of the word, and it looks like it’s from the future – in a good way. We’re not sure what’s more impressive, that the iP1 gets away with completely shedding the rectangular external housing found elsewhere and exposing its guts, or that it actually looks good in doing so.
In any case, looks are in the eye of the beholder and the real reason the iP1 is still the king of the year is that its audio quality is still unmatched when it comes to any dockable system in the “less than a car payment” category. And that’s before you fire up the Bongiovi acoustics, which compensates for the “compression” part of compressed music and makes most digital music sound noticeably better.
Here’s hoping, for the sake of progress, that a new product (from iHome or elsewhere) will bump off the iP1 in 2011. But as it stands, it’s our Stereo of the Year. It’s also on sale at an eye-popping discount at Amazon at the moment.
Buy now: $299 $199 at Amazon.com.
Sara Bareilles: Beatweek 2010 Artist of the Year
When 2010 started, Sara Bareilles had one hit song to her name and had seemingly waited too long to follow up on it. But by the time the year was over that had all changed, as her September release Kaleidoscope Heart debuted at number on one the charts, spawned a new Grammy-nominated hit single of its own with King Of Anything, and contains a treasure trove of other potential hits which will fill the radio airwaves throughout 2011. The trick to it all, as Sara told Beatweek at the time of the album’s release, was to get past her long running writer’s block by witting a song called Uncharted which cleverly documented the awkward position that her first hit Love Song had placed her in career-wise. Not coincidentally, Uncharted has been pegged as her next single.
Other albums and tours sold more this year, but no one did more in 2010 to establish themselves as an artist who will be with us for a generation than Sara Bareilles. Not bad for an artist who back in 2007 was, comically in hindsight, tagged as a one-hit wonder by many a music pundit. As such, Beatweek is pleased to name Sara Bareilles our Artist of the Year for 2010. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take her another three years to come up with her third album. Here’s our conversation with Sara Bareilles.
Jason Derulo: Beatweek 2010 Newcomer of the Year
December 22, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
With the impact Jason Derulo has had on the music scene in 2010, it’s easy to forget that his self titled debut album is still less than a year old. From the R&B vibe of his first hit Whatcha Say, to the rock influenced In My Head, to the funkiness of Ridin’ Solo, to the balladry of What If (and that’s just his four hit singles from the album thus far), Jason has shown that he can successfully approach pop music from every angle. The trick? Jason told Beatweek that he wrote three hundred songs for potential inclusion on the album in order to ensure that each song that made the cut was potential hit-quality material.
The scary part is Jason Derulo is still only twenty-one years old, and this is what he’s accomplished with just one album. Will he still be with us in a decade? Count on it. For what he’s done in 2010, he’s our Newcomer of the Year. Here is Beatweek’s conversation with Jason Derulo.
Styx interview: Tommy Shaw talks Pieces of Eight – Grand Illusion tour
November 5, 2010 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
Styx is Beatweek’s Artist of the Month for 2010
After connecting with live audiences for four decades, music legends Styx are taking a new approach with their latest tour which sees them going authentic old school: their setlist consists simply of their two most popular albums, The Grand Illusion and Pieces Of Eight, played back to back in their entirety. Styx guitarist and vocalist Tommy Shaw talks with Beatweek about where the idea came from, where Styx is as a band in 2010, new Styx studio songs, and a few other projects up his sleeve.
I love this idea of touring and performing the two albums in their entirety. Where did the idea come from?
Our drummer Todd Sucherman had brought this up a couple years ago, and we were were like eh, I don’t know. He wanted to do the Grand Illusion album, which was a great idea but album are short and we were thinking so we’ve got to do that and then we go play another set after that, and it just didn’t seem right. But our manager came up with the idea of why don’t you do two albums, and suddenly it seemed like this whole evening. It seemed to take shape a lot better in our minds.
So it was a great idea to begin with, and then it suddenly became an idea we wanted to actually pull off, because you’re gonna see all of the history of the band in its early years, at least early years for me being in the band, and you get to see what an album is like. For those of us who were there for the whole ride, from making albums and eight tracks and cassettes and all that whole business down to the MP3, you’re gonna be reminded of the artistry of making an album and the arc from the beginning of side one, the middle and the end of side one, there’s an arc. And so it’s gonna be like a four act play, in a way, or like a movie with four big scenes.
Some of these songs have never been performed live. Thirty-something years these albums have been out, and some of the songs have never been performed once?
The one we actually dreaded the most, because we could never pull it off live, is a song called Superstars. It’s a kind of simple little song, but it was hard to pull off because of all the vocals, and we never had enough guys singing that could pull it off, and we now. That particular one, even though we dreaded it, it wound up not being that difficult to do, and it’s actually one of the more powerful songs and one of the best sounding of those new songs.
We added a guitar solo that’s right for the era at the end of it to kind of deal with the fade, and that one’s turned out great. Actually we’re enjoying all of them. Castle Walls we only played a couple of times when it first came out. It doesn’t really lend itself for all concert situations, cause it’s so slow and kind of dark, but in this setting it’s gonna be incredible.
Dealing with fade ins and fade outs, just that alone makes songs a little bit different live, but beyond that, is there a thought that you want to keep these really faithful to the originals, on the account of the way you’re presenting it?
Yeah, we are being as faithful as we can to the originals, except for in cases where we think a little modification is gonna help the presentation of it. So we just take it on a song by song basis. I’m with you. I really want it where let’s don’t talk in between, let’s go song by song, but we’re gonna see how that works because there’s opportunities to do a little bit of storytelling and add some context to the whole thing.
If this ends up being something where it all sells out and everyone loves it, are you open to the idea of continuing to do this on a longer stretch?
If it’s successful and there’s demand for it, then we certainly have to look at that, but right now we’re not putting any more shows on sale until after the first of the year and then we’ll make that decision. But our tour calendar is starting to fill up already. One thing about the way the band is now, we’ve all decided that we just want to keep playing. There’s so many places to play in America, the way we do it, we can go out and play a hundred and ten shows every year and not really burn ourselves out in any of those places, because you don’t play the same places every year. Some places we’ll go back to almost every year like Detroit and Chicago and certain places like that. But there’s other places that we’ll only get to once every two, three, four, five years. And we love to play, so the way the industry has worked out, it’s worked out in a way that we couldn’t be happier with.
I take it you guys must be getting along with each other pretty well if you’re this eager to go out and play all these shows every year. Styx is a harmonious band at this point, right?
Yeah, it has been since 1999. You know, we’re all older, and you get a little different perspective as you get older. When you go through some things in your life that really are serious, then a lot of times arguments and things on the road, we don’t even really get into arguments anymore. People are tired sometimes and will get grumpy, but we love and respect each other and we’re all kind of out here for the same purpose and that’s to make the best possible performance performance every night as we can.
We’re constantly working on details, and it never gets perfect. We keep chipping away at it, and every once in awhile, like Suite Madame Blue, we’re so close to playing that perfect, but there’s no such thing as a perfect performance. There’s humans doing it every night, so it ebbs and flows. But we just keep trying to make it as good as we can, so we’re all a band who has a united purpose. So a lot of the things that divided us in the past really don’t come into play anymore.
I’ve heard that Chuck Panozzo might make some appearances on this tour.
Well, it depends on how good the hotels are (laughs). I’m kidding. Chuck, he’s gonna come out as much as he feels comfortable with, and the door’s always open for that. We love Chuck, and one of my favorite parts of the night is introducing Chuck. There have been a couple of times when I started introducing him and I’m realizing, aw shit, he’s not here. And so there’ll be a little tap on the shoulder, J.Y. going “Chuck’s not here.”
You’ve re-recorded some of your greatest hits, and you’re selling it as an EP called Regeneration at your shows. But there’s a new song on there called Difference In The World. Did you intend to make a new song when you started making the EP?
We’re always writing and creating stuff, there’s just not this big appetite or demand for seventy minutes of new Styx music out there. Honestly, seventy minutes of anybody’s music anymore is kind of too much for me. That’s a lot of demand on songs to have seventeen or twenty killer songs back to back. I don’t know if our fans want that kind of commitment to have to sit down and listen to that sort of thing.
I know for us, we just haven’t had the desire to go sit down and do that so far. This was something that was fun and easy to do. So the idea is, with each Regeneration volume, with volume two, there’s some new song that we’re working on to have an extra song on that one. So once they’re all done, there’ll be a collection of new songs that go with the old stuff.
What else is going on in the world of Tommy Shaw? I take it Shaw-Blades is still with us?
Well we’ve got an album started, and some great songs like California by Led Zeppelin, we’ve got an awesome version of that done. Tiny Dancer is just heartbreaking with steel guitar on it. So we got started on it, it’s just we all got a little sidetracked. Jack was producing an album for Vince Neil, and I’ve been working on this bluegrass project, a song here and a song there, for a couple years with a friend of mine named Brad Davis. So when Shaw-Blades got put on hold, I said well here’s the opportunity to do that. So that’s what I’ve been doing on the side.
interview by Bill Palmer
StyxWorld.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook
Beatweek 2010 Buyers Guide Issue: Josh Groban, Styx, iPad iPhone iPod accessories of the year
November 2, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Beatweek Magazine’s 2010 Buyers Guide Issue:
• Josh Groban cover story interview
• Best iPad, iPhone, and iPod accessories of 2010
• Styx interview with Tommy Shaw
• Blogworld 2010 onsite report
• interviews with Daniel Lanois, Greyson Chance, iPad DJ Rana Sobhany, Eliza Doolittle, and Greg Laswell
• much, much more
Read this issue now
New MacBook Air 2010 is almost a true desktop or laptop replacement
October 27, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
The new MacBook Air is a phenomenal second-generation leap over the original, whose bare-bones specs made it feel like more of a lightweight toy than a lightweight Mac to many. The new Air takes a major step forward with technical specs which are at least within in the same area code of Apple’s full-sized Mac, if not quite the same zip code. Take, for instance, Apple’s new middle of the road thirteen inch $1299 MacBook Air model. With three-quarters the processor speed but a solid-state drive, it might end up being roughly as fast as Apple’s $999 MacBook or $1199 MacBook Pro models, depending on your usage patterns. And while all three models come with two gigabytes of RAM built in, surprise – they can all be upgraded beyond that, even the Air. Unfortunately you’re stuck with a maximum storage space of 256 GB with the Air, even if you opt for the $1599 model. In contrast, Apple’s other laptops still use hard drives, which are slower than solid state, but can easily be upgraded well beyond the 256 limit.
Still, the MacBook Air specs are surprisingly, almost tantalizingly, close to that of its thicker and heavier thirteen-inch Mac laptop counterparts. For all but the hungriest of power users, Mac laptops have long been potential desktop replacements, allowing you to use your laptop as your only computer, provided you’re willing to pay more for the same specs and settle for a smaller monitor (for instance, Apple’s $1199 iMac comes with a twenty-one inch screen and more powerful hardware specs than any Mac laptop in that price range). But until now, the Air has mostly been a sidekick machine, practical only as a travel companion to another more powerful Mac. And since owning more than one laptop is a little over the top, that’s most often meant that the MacBook Air was owned either by someone who also had an iMac at home, or was struggling to get by with an too-slow, too-cramped Air as their sole Mac.
Even with the new Air, using it as your only Mac is a tough call. But if you’ve already decided that you can live with your main and only Mac having a thirteen inch screen, the new MacBook Air is surprisingly not that far of a stretch in that category – so long as you can live with paying a little more for specs that are a little weaker. However, the eleven inch MacBook Air, with its 1.4 Ghz processor and its base 64 GB of storage, is a different story. More…
BlogWorld Expo 2010: onsite report
October 20, 2010 by Al Morita · Leave a Comment
BlogWorld Expo 2010 was an excellent opportunity to learn the latest trends in the social media scene. I’ve been to the conference for the past three years and have noticed the growth of the industry. More corporations are embracing blogging as way to connect with customers and expand visibility beyond traditional advertising. Evidence can be seen with companies such as Ford, Southwest Airlines, Sony, Google, Kodak, and even the US Army on the BlogWorld exhibit floor. There was even a cooking show stage provided by Jenn-Air and celebrity chefs from the Food Channel and the Bravo channel.
BlogWorld’s attendance grew over 70% for 2010 and the number of conference tracks has grown as well. Attendees had a number of choices for program tracks such as broadcasting, mobile, monetization, entertainment, milblogging, real estate, photography, podcasting, travel, and food. The wide variety of tracks helps ensure there is at least one topic of interest for every time segment.
What things did I learn from the conference? Many of the sessions brought up the importance of selecting a topic you are passionate about in your blog. Monetization of your blog may take months or even years before becoming profitable. The people presenting at the conference shared how they worked extremely hard to become successful. Having something you are passionate about will provide some extra motivation to continue the blog while it is developing. A blog’s success is not solely based on the number of page views. A reader that spends several minutes on your site is far more valuable than one that looks at one page and leaves. I learned that many of the seasoned bloggers earn a living through speaking engagements, selling e-books, and merchandise to supplement their income.
BlogWorld also has one of the best parties for bloggers. The Light Group did an excellent job with organizing the after hour events. The Thursday night party was at Liquid Pool Lounge and Friday night’s was at Haze Nightclub at ARIA Resort & Casino in CityCenter. Both venues were amazing and it looked like everyone was having a good time.
The closing keynote was the highlight of the conference. Rob Barnett hosted the keynote in a talk show format interview with Adam Carolla, Penn Jillette, former Kodak CMO Jeff Hayzlett, Cali Lewis, and Mark Malkoff. I liked the part where Penn talked about hanging out with the audience after each of their shows. I know that was one of the things I liked about going to their show. It was enlightening to hear Rob bring up a story about Les Paul meeting up with his fans as well.
In summary, BlogWorld Expo 2010 was the best yet with a wealth of knowledge, great networking opportunities, and after-hour parties.
Verizon iPhone: Dear Apple, just write the damn check to AT&T already
October 2, 2010 by Beatweek · 17 Comments
Dear Apple,
Just write the damn check to AT&T and give the world a Verizon iPhone already. Whoops, where are my manners? Hi, Steve. Nice job with the iPhone, by the way. You brought the smartphone to the masses, altered users’ daily lives for the better, and you still offer by far the most well done, most consumer-appropriate smartphone on the market. And yet, for reasons which surely made sense to you back in 2007 but make no sense to anyone in 2010, you decided to offer your smartphone strictly to those of us who use AT&T.
So fix it, Steve. Get out of that deal you made with AT&T. Yes, we all know by now that it was a five year deal signed in 2007, not set to expire until 2012. But you’ve proven over the yaers how smart you are, so surely you thought to put performance clauses in said deal which allow you to walk away if AT&T’s network is underperforming. Right? And failing that, you certainly included an opt-out clause which allows you to simply write a massive thank-you check to AT&T which will bring the deal to an immediate end and allow you to expand the iPhone’s reach to customers of Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, or any new U.S. carrier which might spring up in a five year span. Right?
Because the only other possibility would be that you locked the iPhone into a five year deal, with no out clause, and no regard for the uncertainties of just how the still-very-young cellphone industry might evolve over that period of time? After all, it was you who once said “Our headlights don’t go that far” (or some such) when asked by an analyst to predict some aspect of the overall future of the computer industry.
Knowing what you don’t know is half the battle. Fair enough if you didn’t see the Google backstabbing and the Android stupidity coming. But did you really think Verizon and Sprint were going to sit around for five years and not come up with some kind of semi-competent iPhone “alternative” one way or the other? No way. You’re too smart to have locked yourself into that five year AT&T deal without some way of getting out of it. My guess is that you structured it such that you can get out any time you want, simply by writing a very large check. And last time I checked, Apple’s cash position is a number that’s, like, eleven digits long or something. There’s no size check you can’t write, Steve. Heck, you could even buy AT&T. Well, not in cash (and not that I’d recommend it anyway). But certainly, you’ve got enough Apple cash sitting around to at least buy off AT&T, whose network is melting down due to all those iPhones, and whose actions of late suggest it doesn’t necessarily want iPhone exclusivity anymore anyway. In other words, even if you didn’t think to build an out-clause into the original contract, I’ll bet you could sell AT&T on the idea by now one way or the other.
Maybe you’ve already done so, Steve. Perhaps the Verizon iPhone is on its way and we just don’t know it yet because you haven’t told us. If so, then congrats, as usual, for figuring out how to make things happen, how to adapt, how to get things done. But if you haven’t, then what are you waiting for? Just write the friggin’ check already and let’s get this party started. I can’t be the only iPhone user who’s tired by now of being asked by friends for advice on phones that are “like an iPhone” but are available from Verizon.
Nine times out of ten, when I can’t figure out what you’re doing, Steve, I just defer to the fact that you’re demonstrably smarter than I am. But this one’s a head scratcher, and not by a small measure.
Sincerely,
An iPhone user since 2007
(…who doesn’t have problems with AT&T)
(…and will likely stay with AT&T even if the iPhone comes to Verizon)
The Black Crowes: the 2010 concert experience
September 24, 2010 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
If you think the nature of the Black Crowes concert experience in late 2010 is going to change just because the band is on its farewell (for now) tour, think again. The band’s gig at the House of Blues this week revealed that the brothers Robinson and crew are carrying out the latter days of this incarnation of the band in the same fashion they always have: the music goes where it wants to, and the music speaks for itself. In fact, if there is a perceptible change in the nature of a live Crowes show of late, it’s that the concept has been taken even further toward its logical conclusion. And for those who’ve come to savor just what it is that makes a Black Crowes concert such a different experience over the years than a Black Crowes studio record, it’s more than welcome.
Here’s what concert goers weren’t greeted to this past Wednesday night: there wasn’t any sort of banter or conversation between songs. Band members didn’t laboriously introduce each other at any point during the set. In fact the Crowes have worked so hard to streamline their shows down to what counts that there wasn’t even an opening act. What the audience did get was a setlist spanning the band’s twenty year catalog. Jealous Again from their debut album. Appaloosa from their recent “Before The Frost” experiment. A bit of everything in between.
That meant opening the night with Gone, which also opened their third album Amorica, which was as close to a hit song as the band performed during its first several numbers. During the course of the evening there were eventually plenty of hits mixed in of course, including radio staples Hard To Handle and Remedy along with live favorite Wiser Time. The latter was one of several songs which simply refused to end, with an extended breakdown which at one point consisted of nothing but keys and rhythm section while the band’s guitarists vacated the landscape. Not that there weren’t plenty of exposed guitar features (and for that matter harmonica features) in there as well. Those expecting a Crowes concert to consist of nothing but faithful to the studio versions aren’t going to get what they came for. Rather, the loyalty is devoted to what the songs could have been if not for the constraints of an album, each evolving over the years into a road life of their own.
Don’t get me wrong. The Crowes know how to interact with their live audience, and on a deeper level than a lot of other bands who try a lot harder to. But rather than telling funny stories in between songs, these guys simply speak to their audience with their instruments. At this point most people coming to Crowes concerts know what they’re in for, and they’re hanging on every note of it. Those looking for studio-faithful renditions of nothing but the band’s biggest radio hits are better off staying home and cherry-picking them from iTunes instead.
You can count on one hand the number of bands that are still commercially relevant in the twenty-first century (Croweology debuted in the top ten this past summer) and yet so brazenly indifferent toward that commercial success when it comes to their live shows. It’s not that the Crowes shy away from their biggest hits as a matter of course; it’s that they’re only going to play the hits that they feel like playing, the ones that feel right for the moment. It’s part of what makes them worth seeing on a repeated basis, because you’ll never end up seeing the same show twice. While their set this night included a number of songs from their heady debut album, their massive radio hit She Talks To Angels wasn’t one of them. Instead the band dusted off Could I’ve Been So Blind, from that same record, and dutifully presented it as one of those songs that’s morphed into something that the original studio version could only have ever dreamt of being.
It’s true of all bands to varying degrees, but with the Black Crowes more so than most others: they either work for you or they don’t. Particularly when you’re talking about a band that’s never tried to hide the fact that they’re rockers from the south, while never pretending to be southern rockers (you either get that delineation or your don’t). But if these guys are your thing, then do yourself a favor and catch them on what’s left of this tour if they’re coming to your town. Not that this will probably be your last opportunity ever, as both Chris and Rich Robinson told me earlier this year that it’s unlikely they’ll never reunite. But as they and their bandmates prepare to part ways at the end of 2010 in order to go home and raise their kids for awhile, it’s worth noting that they’re doing so at a time when their live set is at a historical peak.
Verizon iPhone (and AT&T iPhone) should have happened back in 2007
September 23, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Three-plus years into the iPhone era, and people in the U.S. still can’t get their hands on one if they’re a customer of Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile. And that would be fine if the folks who’ve wanted an iPhone but felt loyalty to one of those carriers had all caved and switched to AT&T just to get one by now. But any formal or informal sampling of the public makes it clear that while that has happened to some extent, it largely hasn’t happened – and there’s no overwhelming reason to believe that after a year stalemate, anything is likely to change in that regard.
In the thirteen years since Steve Jobs returned to the company, Apple has rarely made the kind of mistakes so large that outsiders would notice. Sure, MacOS X and the original iMac should have debuted simultaneously back in 1998. iPhone 4 inventory issues in 2010 are so absurd that it’s no surprise someone’s head has already rolled over it. The Mac Mini and AppleTV have been ongoing flops outside the geekdom. But none of these mistakes have been overly substantial, either because they were temporary overcomeable things (MacOS X shipped eventually, and the iPhone 4 will ship in quantity eventually), or because they concerned products like the Mac Mini that almost no one ever cared about anyway.
But hamstringing iPhone growth over the past three-plus years by tying it to a mere one out of the four major U.S. carriers has, in hindsight, been a nearly inarguable mistake. In fact, it can be judged as a mistake both from what it cost Apple and from what it failed to accomplish in its own right. The failure in the latter sense comes from just how little Apple has gained by partnering exclusively with AT&T. Sure, there’s been plenty of money in it for Apple, but this is a company that has more billions of cash on hand that it’ll ever know what to do with. Beyond that, what did Apple accomplish via exclusivity? The ability to force AT&T into improving its network, or its customer service, or its billing plans? Ha.
The other half of the failure has been more devastating. By simply releasing two iPhone models from the get-go back in 2007, one for AT&T and the other for Verizon, there’s no reason to believe the iPhone’s marketshare couldn’t be, say, fifty to a hundred percent higher than it is right now. Worse, once Verizon saw the iPhone taking off within the AT&T constraints, Verizon decided to launch its own fake iPhone known as the Droid, which – despite no one outside the geekdom considering the Droid to be anywhere close to being on par with the iPhone in terms of being a mainstream-suitable product – has seen plenty respectable sales. And nearly all of those Verizon Droid sales would have been iPhone sales if Apple hadn’t make the mistake of committing to one carrier exclusively back in 2007.
Sure, by giving the iPhone to multiple carriers from the start, Apple wouldn’t have been able to control the iPhone platform in the way it wanted to. But as it’s turned out, Apple hasn’t been able to control the iPhone experience from top to bottom even with exclusivity.
The good news for Apple is that the Droid is still a mere paper tiger, a placeholder in the minds of most non-geek Verizon users until the iPhone finally arrives (and the same thing goes for that phone Sprint has with the license plate for a name, until a Sprint iPhone finally happens).
It’s not that often that Apple makes a major, lasting, damaging, mistake with one of its major product lines. But in the fast moving technology industry, it’s even rarer that a company can fix that mistake three years later and actually manage to get away with it. When it comes to finally get a Verizon iPhone out the door, however, that’s still the case.
Eminem, Rihanna face off in MTV VMA opener
September 12, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, which have in the past seen onstage collaborations seemingly too mismatched to be true, instead opened the night’s festivities with a live duet from a pair of artists who’ve already spent plenty of time together on the radio. Eminem took the stage for a solo rendition of his new single Not Afraid, but that gave way when Rihanna appeared and the two performed their duet Love The Way You Lie. Despite the combative subject nature of the song, the two did little more than stare each other down while trading vocals, eventually closing the song with their backs to each other. VMA host Chelsea Handler was then accosted (scripted, of course) by Lindsay Lohan in the hallway before taking the stage, with Handler’s alcohol bracelet being set off in the process.
Verizon iPhone: top eight reasons why it should (but won’t) happen in 2010
August 30, 2010 by Beatweek · 4 Comments
It’s 2010, and Apple is still refusing to take the money that Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers have been attempting to stuff into the company’s pockets, unless those users are willing to switch to AT&T. Textbook business strategy says you find a way to take their money before they give it to your competitor. But while it’s difficult to argue with Apple’s overwhelming success over the past decade, it’s never been one to do anything by the book. So here are the top reasons why a Verizon iPhone (and for good measure, a Sprint iPhone and a T-Mobile iPhone) really should be announced this week and brought to market in time for the 2010 holiday shopping season – but likely won’t…
1. These aren’t the Droids you’re looking for. What, you thought anyone (outside of hardcore geeks) actually cares about the Verizon Droid for the geeks-only Android platform? Of course not. The only reason Verizon customers are paying attention to the Droid at all is because they want an iPhone but aren’t willing to switch to AT&T just to make it happen, and from a distance, if you squint real hard, Verizon’s Droid sorta kinda starts to look like a suitable fake iPhone. It’s bad business for Apple to refuse to take Verizon customers’ money, forcing them to buy a Droid instead. It’s also cruel.
2. Why it won’t happen: Apple is betting (correctly, in many documented cases) that Verizon customers will finally get tired of waiting and go ahead and switch to AT&T. Apple is also apparently betting (again, correctly, in a plenty of cases) that those Verizon customers who do buy the Droid will be able to see first-hand that it’s not a suitable iPhone alternative unless you’re a hard-core technology geek, making them all the more motivated to buy a Verizon iPhone when it finally happens in 2011 or whenever.
3. Stress relief: AT&T’s network is overburdened by the tens of millions of iPhone users in the U.S., and is either unwilling, unable, or legally prohibited from being able to keep up in terms of building out that network further to accommodate the iPhone’s ever-growing ranks. Offering the iPhone on Verizon’s network, rather than continuing to ask Verizon’s customers to switch to AT&T, would slow down the rate at which AT&T’s network is melting down.
4. Why it won’t happen: Apple knows that bringing the iPhone to Verizon would (in addition to immediately bringing Verizon Droid sales down to right about zero) result in such a massive uptick in voice and data usage on the Verizon network that it would be unlikely to be a better experience than what iPhone users are getting on AT&T now. Also, the AT&T iPhone experience, while mediocre, isn’t nearly as bad as most Verizon customers inexplicably seem to think it is.
5. Message calendar: When’s the last time Apple controlled the iPhone storyline? Ever since the iPhone 4 rollout, the geek media has tried to make the story be all about the non-existent antenna controversy, users have seen the story as being all about inventory shortages, lack of a white model, proximity sensor bugs, and the inevitable class action suit (which Apple will lose) brought by iPhone 3G users who’ve seen their iPhone turned into a useless pile of goop by iOS 4, which they were told to install. One could even argue that Apple lost control of the iPhone message the day that iPhone 4 prototype surfaced on Gizmodo, long before the product was even introduced.
Apple hasn’t had two consecutive positive days of iPhone-related press in months. And there’s only one story that could change all that, a story that would be bigger than all other iPhone related headlines of 2010 combined: bringing the iPhone to other U.S. carriers.
6. Why it won’t happen: When was the last time you saw Steve Jobs bullied into releasing a product he wasn’t ready to release?
7. Can’t we all just get along? Offering a Verizon-compatible iPhone 4 in 2010 would be as simple as building in different antenna and receiver technology designed to work with the Verizon network instead of the AT&T network. Apple’s all-based-covered history suggests that the company may have already built such a product and has been keeping it under lock and key in Cupertino. If so, just release the damn thing already.
8. Why is won’t happen: Have you tried to find an iPhone 4 in a store lately? Have you seen the wait times for it online? The overriding factor here is that Apple is unlikely to open the iPhone 4 up to additional customers so long as it can barely keep up with existing demand. What are the odds that Apple finds a magic wand to fix all of the iPhone 4′s inventory, component, and production issues in time for the 2010 holiday season?
Verizon iPhone: ultimate Christmas 2010 stocking stuffer
August 24, 2010 by Beatweek · 3 Comments
Verizon and Apple still have no comment as to when (forget if) the still-nonexistent Verizon iPhone will come to market. But supposing the two companies manage to get on the same page in time for the 2010 holiday season (admittedly a big leap of faith, as even the most optimistic of rumor-mongers seem to be pointing to January 2011), we might see a new phenomenon: iPhones being given as Christmas and holiday gifts to current Verizon customers. As many a well-intentioned gift giver has learned the hard way over the past three years, giving someone an iPhone as a gift (most commonly in the form of an Apple gift card) is no guarantee that the recipient will actually accept the gift. After all, for various oft-repeated reasons, many a Verizon customer wants an iPhone but isn’t willing to switch to AT&T just to get one – and for the iPhone’s entire existence in the United States, using one has meant having to do exactly that.
The fact that folks have refused the gift of a free iPhone just to remain with Verizon is your answer to why it’s a matter of “when” and not “if” when it comes to seeing the iPhone come to Verizon. While Apple has often refused to take shortcuts to expand the size of its market which would have cheapened the user experience (see the lack of Flash on the iPad, which would run like a dog, and the lack of a sub-$500 Macintosh, which would be built out of the same sadly obsolete components as any other sub-$500 computer), there’s very little about the current iPhone experience that can’t easily be replicated on Verizon simply by releasing an alternate iPhone model with a Verizon-compatible antenna instead of an AT&T-compatible one. Here’s more on the Verizon iPhone.
Deftones triumph over tragedy: the Beatweek interview
August 18, 2010 by Bill Palmer · Leave a Comment
Deftones had been rocking together for twenty years and were well on their way to cranking out an album called Eros when a car accident left their founding bassist in a coma, leaving the other members to put Eros on the shelf and ponder their future as a band. But rather than pack it in, Deftones instead decided to create entirely new album (with help from a longtime friend on bass) entitled Diamond Eyes, which has, if anything, brought them closer together. In between a European tour and a just-begun U.S. headlining tour, founding drummer Abe Cunningham took time out to discuss the making of Diamond Eyes, the band’s upcoming fall co-headlining tour with Alice in Chains, and offer fans an update on bassist Chi Cheng’s condition…
Some bands can conquer America but not Europe or vice versa, or they’re popular in Japan but not Australia, or random things like that. Have you guys found that your fanbases have grown up equally?
It’s funny you say that, Japan for instance, I wish we were bigger in Japan. I love Japan, it’s one of our favorite places to go. We’ve been several times over the years and we do well there, but it’s one of those places that I would love to go all the time.
Over the years, our early managers that we had for quite some time, I’ve got to credit them for always stressing international touring. I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to go to crazy places, you know what I mean? I think it’s the greatest thing in the world to be able to go somewhere else besides your town to play music. So that’s one of the great things early on when we started touring on our first records and stuff, we were going overseas.
Once you guys came back together to work on Diamond Eyes and decided to start from scratch, did it then become an easy and quick process, or is it tough conceptually to say okay, we’re going to start from scratch now?
Initially there wasn’t an idea to do another record. We actually had one show booked, we had this one obligation that we needed to fulfill. So we called our buddy Sergio up, who had been with us before and was a friend of ours. He lives in New York and we’re out in California, so he came out and we pretty much just jammed through what we play for the set for the show, and just started jamming too, and we ended up writing a song that day. So that was pretty much the fruit of what would become Diamond Eyes.
Did you guys ever have the thought, that maybe this is over, or we’re going to go on a long hiatus?
One guy in the band, actually, he was talking about maybe stopping, maybe changing the name, dropping “Deftones” and starting over as a new band. There was a little bit of talk about that, but really, we took a few months off to try to think about things and hang with Chi and try to help him and be with him, and during that time we all gravitated back to our jam room. We just needed to play music. It’s what we do, and it’s what we’ve done for all of our lives, pretty much.
There was, for a second, there was talk of maybe stopping. But what good would that do? It wouldn’t do anything for Chi, and it wouldn’t do anything for us.
I heard that you guys did not use ProTools on this album, you made it more organically.
ProTools is pretty much the format that everyone records to these days, it’s the industry standard. The past few records we’ve done, communication and the way we were interacting with each other was not there. People were laying down parts and then leaving, and then somebody else would come in and lay down a part, and kind of put it together in ProTools and use it as a tool to structure songs and shit.
This time around, of course we recorded it digitally, that’s just what people do, not many people record to tape anymore. That being said, this is the first record that we had probably since our first or second record that we had everything written before we went in and we were able to play it as a band, like a real band, go in and knock these songs out. So I think that was the aspect, we had everything dialed before we went in to track it.
It seems like the record would end up feeling more like a live record when you make it that way.
Yeah definitely, that’s the whole point. Over the years, that’s the way it was always done in the past, even with us. But technology and different things creeping into the mix, people have been tracking records in layers for the get-go too, so it’s just another way of doing it. But we definitely go for the whole live feel. We’re humans and we try to make a human record. These days a lot of that gets lost, because you can nitpick, and so many people in the studios are making these pristine recordings. I don’t mean sonically pristine, I mean just they way they’re executed, you can go fix any flub, you can auto-tune, pitch-correct, and it takes the soul and the balls out of a recording.
I know you want your fans and the world to keep Chi in their thoughts. What do you want them to know about his current state of health?
At this point he’s making very, very slow progress. He’s got a great team of people working with him. It’s a really tough situation. I mean at this point we’re trying to keep people aware of it. People are always asking, and people are curious, they want to know what’s up, so we’re just trying to keep it out there, cause it’s been over a year, almost creeping up on two years, which is a long time, especially in this day and age when people’s attention spans are pretty short. Just that he’s still there and he’s fighting. He’s got a ton of love and support from around the world, but he needs it to keep on coming. We’re just hanging in there for our brother. It’s pretty wild that it’s been this long.
You’re going to be touring with Alice in Chains. How did that come together?
We’ve known those guys for many, many years. We met years ago. Our first couple records, we ended up doing a lot of recording up in Seattle with a guy who did most of our records, Terry Date, who is from Seattle, so we were always up there. We met them over the years, and now, the record we just did, Diamond Eyes, our producer who did that, Nick Raskulinecz, had just gotten done doing the latest Alice record, Black Gives Way To Blue. So while we were doing our record they were popping in because they were still finishing up theirs and doing mixes. So they were popping into our thing talking to Nick, and we all started hanging again because they’re such rad dudes. I guess it was sort of one of these things.
I’m so stoked that they’re playing their songs again, because it’s been shit, fifteen or so years since they actually had a record out, and they deserve to play their songs. They have great, great, great music. So this thing just sort of just sprouted. And we figured we wanted to tour with Mastodon, those guys have been buddies of ours for quite some time also, and we’ve always talked about doing a little something.
Is there the possibility of on-stage collaborations once you get going?
These things, if they happen, they would happen over time and organically, which is always the best way. It would be a blast and I don’t see why that couldn’t happen. Can’t make any promises.
I follow Hayley Williams from Paramore on Twitter, and she can’t stop talking about you guys. She just loves Deftones. It’s funny because she’s twenty years old, and you guys have been a band for over twenty years. And she’s not the only one. Does it surprise you that you’ve got so many twenty year old fans at this point?
The more the merrier. It’s great. People have grown with us. We’re certainly not the Rolling Stones by any means, but we’ve been around for awhile, we’re doing our thing. I think it’s great. That girl is a total sweetheart, and we ended up meeting them.
It’s pretty funny how things work out. She actually ended up doing a song, we were playing the same show when we were over in Europe last month. So she ended up doing the song Passenger with us, and she sang Maynard’s part, Maynard James Keenan, the guy from Tool. That virally on the internet fucking went everywhere.
Every time you hear about California, you hear about LA or San Francisco, you don’t hear as much about Sacramento. What would you want the world to know about your home town?
Sacto’s just a great cool place. It’s laid back, right smack dab in the middle. You can go an hour west and be in the bay area, San Francisco, Berkeley. You can go an hour east and be up in Lake Tahoe. It’s some of the most fertile land around and grows food for our country. It’s just a cool little town, man. It’s also the capitol, so there’s some crazy shit that goes down here. But it’s always nice to leave, and always nice to come back to.
Learn more at Deftones.com • iTunes • Twitter • Facebook
Brett Favre could have been going into the NFL Hall of Fame today
August 7, 2010 by Beatweek · Leave a Comment
Jerry Rice is only now going into the NFL Hall of Fame because it can only happen five years after retirement, and he chose to extend his career by going from the 49ers to the Raiders to the Broncos before finally calling it a day on his career. Sound familiar? If Brett Favre plays this season, it’ll be another five years before we see his (likely unanimous) induction into the football hall of fame. Interestingly enough, Favre could have been going into the hall of fame along with Rice tonight if Favre had retired back when some folks first thought he might. After Brett’s weak 2005 season with the Packers, speculation arose that the then thirty-five year old might indeed retire. Instead he came back with a strong 2006 season, but even then hinted that that might be his final season. You know the rest of the journey, which included retirements, unretirements, re-retirements, a season with the New York Jets, and now questions over whether he’ll return to the Vikings this season – a question which won’t truly be answered until the first game of the season.
But what we do know that it that we won’t see Favre in the NFL Hall of Fame for at least another five years, depending on how much longer he does play. Even as the statistically greatest wide receiver (Jerry Rice) and running back (Emmitt Smith) of all time have spent their week choosing what words to speak during their induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame today, the statistically greatest quarterback of all time is still trying to decide whether to put on a uniform for one more season.
The Black Crowes interview: Croweology and why they’re calling it quits – for now
August 3, 2010 by Bill Palmer · 1 Comment
When The Black Crowes broke up in 2002 it was because they were burnt out and because they were unable to stop fighting with each other like children. After a successful comeback in 2005 and a five year reunion, The Crowes are now parting ways again – but this time it has more to do with the fact that three of the band members just had children. But while founding brothers Chris and Rich Robinson both told me that it’s unlikely they’ll never get back together as The Black Crowes, they’ve nonetheless offered fans a parting gift in the form of Croweology, an acoustic double album which spans their twenty year career and includes new versions of their biggest hits. And they’re not done yet, as they’re touring through at least the end of 2010 before hanging it up. But with the past few years having been a second renaissance for the Crowes, including enjoying all the benefits of a stable lineup of band members who’ve figured out how to live with each other, and the band’s newfound ability to find major chart success without needing a major label, why why shut it down now, in the middle of an upswing?
“I think that’s the main reason to do it,” says Chris Robinson from his home in Los Angeles, which he moved to sixteen years ago after leaving behind the band’s Atlanta-area origins. “We called what we did before a hiatus, but that was really more of breaking up the band. Like anything, there was reasons to do it, personal reasons, soulful reasons, mental health reasons. But I think now, it’s more like okay, we’ve been working fucking hard for five years as well. Let’s step away from this.”
For a pair of brothers whose in-fighting is so legendary that they once had to scrap an album after having taken turns spitefully recording over each other’s mutually disapproved-of work, the Brothers Robinson are surprisingly on the same page when it comes to why they’re putting the Crowes on the shelf after 2010. Or as Rich tells me from the other side of the country on that same day (he moved to New England years ago), “everyone’s happy with the band, and we don’t really want to mess it up this time. We don’t want to push it too much. So we felt like five years is a good amount of time since we’ve been back, and we’ve been on tour every year since then and making records and doing stuff. So we just felt like it was time to take a break before we sort of run ourselves out again.”
The new Croweology album comes out of a desire to mark the twentieth anniversary of the band’s debut album Shake Your Money Maker, a straight ahead rock record from an obviously southern band who nonetheless managed to be anything but a “southern rock” band while also managing to bear little resemblance to their Seattle-based contemporaries of the day. “I didn’t really have that working man Skynyrd kind of hardass thing,” says Chris of why the band’s music has never quite matched up with the band members’ accents. “We were like failed art school people more than rednecky kind of dudes.”
After briefly chewing on the idea of simply making a straight-through acoustic re-recording of Shake Your Money Maker, they then “realized that it’s been twenty years, and there’s a whole array of songs that we wanted to touch on,” Rich says, which then led to a twenty song acoustic collection spanning the band’s first six albums. Croweology includes classic hits like Jealous Again and Remedy along with tour favorites like Wiser Time and My Morning Song. Remarkably, after Chris, Rich, and founding drummer Steve Gorman each sat down and came up with their own preferred tracklist, “There was about eighty percent agreement right off the bat.”
The name “Croweology” is play on the word “anthology” which Chris came up with after first kicking around the title “Music To Get Your Shit Together By” and then thinking better of it. He’s quick to point out that it’s not quite an anthology, however, as “we did a lot of arrangemental things and changed a lot of things. Not on any design, but just because that’s the nature of it. I don’t think we were just gonna go into the studio and record our songs the way they’ve been, because that’s been the progression of this band, is they always are changing anyway. So I think to take the idea of an anthology and just to turn it into our own world or our own word. I mean we kind of did that with Amorica as well. If there’s not a word, make one up.”
Amorica, the band’s third record from 1994, is perhaps most notable for having delivered the “road song” Wiser Time, which to this day remains one of the most popular live songs with fans. Rich, who wrote the music for it, says the song “emotes a feeling. People who listen to it get a feeling from it, and that’s what music is. It’s visceral. It’s supposed to create this feeling. Some of it excited, some of it down, some of it sort of peaceful, almost to transport someone through a feeling. It puts you in a car, it puts you in a sort of place. To me, all great music does that.”
Chris, who wrote the lyrics, sees Wiser Time from another angle, and shares the inspiration behind the song’s most memorable line. “I think people maybe identify with the idea, there’s a lyric in the song that says, and I used to get asked this question during interviews back in the early nineties a lot, it’s so cliche to write a song about the road, why do you write these kind of songs or use that as an image or whatever. The point is, I guess you never left home. It’s easy to say why would you write a song about this perpetual movement and travel that you’ve taken on to be able to play music, when you just sit at your house all day or you live in the same town you grew up in, and you go on vacation once a year. I don’t expect you, obviously, to understand a deep connection to the physical reality of my life. I think a lot of people identified with that feeling. A lot of us have left home. A lot of us have gone in the world to find life and love and loss and adventure and boredom.”
But as if to underline that the Crowes now understand how much they need each other, Chris adds that Wiser Time is more than just a lyrical journey: “We have the extended solo sections and things for the band to be able to have a musical conversation and tell how they feel about that as well, just as important as the lyric or the melody.”
Still, with the history of the band, some fans are going to assume that the new hiatus is also somehow, in some way, about in-fighting. But Rich has a plenty believable explanation, which is that the band reached a point in 2009 in which three of them (Rich, Chris, and guitarist Luther Dickinson) each learned that their wives were pregnant, which led them to conclude that “this is a good time to take a break.”
It’s not that the past five years have been strife-free. Rich says that they’ve learned to have “disagreements instead of fights” and Chris admits that the initial 2005 reunion was not as smooth as it could have been: “One part of it is, it did take us two and a half years when we got the band back together to get an album, Warpaint, together. We had worked on some demo sessions and we’d worked on some tracks here and there, and they didn’t go well at all. I think that’s why the summer of ’07 when we found ourselves up in Atlanta and Rich and I finally got on the same page in terms of the material and everything, that’s why that was such a big breakthrough in a sense for us. But those stupidly stubborn two and a half years there, I mean the fighting part, to be honest, it’s like I don’t have it in me to be that aggressive and angry over something that is so beautiful to me.”
Chris also says the fact that the internet now allows the two to actively collaborate from opposite sides of the country, rather than having to park themselves in the same room in order to accomplish anything creatively, has been a surprising blessing. “I’m not always that excited about technology, but maybe in this scenario it’s helped our relationship.”
If you haven’t caught The Black Crowes in concert in awhile, it’s not too late yet, as they have a series of tour dates which run through December 2010. The shows will be in the recent Crowes tradition of three hour live efforts, but in this case each show will be split into a pair of ninety minute sets, one electric, one fittingly acoustic. But just because a song appears acoustically on Croweology, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to hear it that way on any given night of the tour. “Some nights we’ll play Jealous Again acoustic, some nights we’ll play it electric,” Rich says. “Just kind of what we feel. Maybe there will be songs that weren’t on the album that we’ll try in this format or whatever. It’s really about delving into our catalog, playing songs that we’ve played over the years, playing songs that have been important to us over the years.”
Again, surprisingly on the same page, Chris offers that “we’re happy to play Thorn In My Pride acoustic one night, but then if we don’t get to that one, we can throw it in the electric set. I think the record itself is twenty songs. That for us looks like the bulk of both sets in a sense. That still gives us a lot of space to play a lot of our catalog and a lot of stuff.”
Just as some of the songs on Croweology stretch to nearly the ten minute mark despite being only half as long in their original rendition, the Crowes have a notable habit of turning even some of their tightest radio staples into extended jam sessions in concert. Don’t expect that to change, as it’s a point of pride for the band, even as Chris admits “I realize we can be self indulgent” but adds that “someone has to be in an age of pandering beggars of music. People will fucking do anything. American Idol has turned everything into a talent show. And a talent show, although it might be exciting for the pedestrian, is kind of sad because usually it’s just someone saying ‘Please like me!’”
While the band members do have various other musical endeavors and solo projects, Rich says the Crowes are not necessarily being set aside in favor of those other projects. “It’s what we do,” he says in terms of making music, but at the same time, he doesn’t see anyone taking their solo project out for a “six month tour” during the break. “This is like let’s take it easy, let’s be with ourselves.”
But with the band unwilling to put a timetable on when we might see them again after 2010, it does beg the question of whether it’s possible that this might indeed end up being the end of The Black Crowes for good.
“I’ve seen weirder things happen,” says Chris of the possibility that this might be the end of the road. “I think everyone feels personally involved of course with the last twenty years, and I would hope that everyone sees what we get to do as privilege and not our right, in terms of making your living as a musician and an artist without having to be in show business that much. It’s pretty fucking cool. I don’t know. The world keeps on turning. We’ll see where we get.”
Rich adds that “it’s unlikely that we would never get back together” and even hints that if the Croweology tour goes well, they may even extend it through the summer of 2011 before finally calling it a day.
These do not sound like two guys who think they’ve already made their final album together. Crowes fans have cast their vote today, buying Croweology in such volume in its first middle-of-the-night hours of digital availability that it’s already risen to the number two spot on the iTunes rock chart despite containing no newly written songs.
But as far as what the long term future holds for The Black Crowes, even as the Brothers Robinson both go out of their way to try to avoid committing to anything one way or the other during the course of separate conversations from opposite sides of the country, they appear to be on a sufficiently similar wavelength these days that they both settle on the same phrase to describe their band’s future: “You never know.”
Learn more at BlackCrowes.com • iTunes • Facebook
No Verizon iPhone any time soon, suggests new combative TV ads
July 4, 2010 by Beatweek · 11 Comments
A Verizon iPhone won’t happen any time soon, if the combative nature of Verizon’s new television ads is any indication. The carrier’s new “Rule The Air” campaign, which is squarely aimed at exploiting the iPhone 4 antenna controversy, suggests that Verizon is more interested in antagonizing Apple in 2010 than preparing for any kind of upcoming partnership. Corporate alliances can shift quickly, particularly in a fast-changing industry like consumer technology. But in mid 2010 Verizon appears to have no more of an expectation of being in a partnership with Apple any time soon than the carrier did back when it began running specifically anti-iPhone ads back in the second half of 2009, labeling the iPhone a “misfit toy” as the carrier was attempting to launch its own competing Droid phone. While it’s a given that the Droid will quickly fade from the landscape as soon as a Verizon iPhone is launched (clear, at least, to everyone except the geek pundits who are too insulated from the mainstream market to accurately predict anything at this point), Verizon’s latest attempts to publicly antagonize Apple suggest that the day of the Verizon iPhone won’t come in 2010.
Bush song “Afterlife” sounds just like 2010-era Bush should sound like
July 3, 2010 by Beatweek · 7 Comments
The new Bush single “Afterlife” won’t hit iTunes for another ten days, but Gavin Rossdale and the gang have posted a streaming version of the song to their website – which you have to log into with your Facebook account to hear. But fans of the band may find doing so to be well worth it, as Afterlife is instantly recognizable as being a Bush, but like Rossdale’s 2008 solo project, sounds like it belongs in the current century. Afterlife is also instantly catchy enough that it’s almost certain to become a major radio hit, no small feat for a band that packed it in nearly a decade ago. Bush’s reunion, however, is no surprise – Rossdale told Beatweek back in 2008 that his solo project was originally intended to be a Bush reunion album. If you want to hear Afterlife right now on Bush’s official website, it’s right here.
